One of the most self-forgetful actions ever performed was by Sergeant Ross. We found a man on the German barbed wire, who was so badly wounded that when we tried to pick him up, one by the shoulders and the other by the feet, it almost seemed that we would pull him apart. The blood was gushing from his mouth, where he had bitten through lips and tongue, so that he might not jeopardize, by groaning, the chances of some other man who was less badly wounded than he. He begged us to put him out of his misery, but we were determined we would get him his chance, though we did not expect him to live. But the sergeant threw himself down on the ground and made of his body a _human sledge_. Some others joined us, and we put the wounded man on his back and dragged them thus across two hundred yards of No Man's Land, through the broken barbed wire and shell-torn ground, where every few inches there was a piece of jagged shell, and in and out of the shell-holes. So anxious were we to get to safety that we did not notice the condition of the man underneath until we got into our trenches; then it was hard to see which was the worst wounded of the two. The sergeant had his hands, face, and body torn to ribbons, and we had never guessed it, for never once did he ask us to "go slow" or "wait a bit." Such is the stuff that men are made of. It sounds incredible, but we got a wounded man, still alive, eight days after the attack. It was reported to me that some one was heard calling from No Man's Land for a stretcher-bearer, but I suspected a German trap, for I did not think it possible that any man could be out there alive when it was more than a week after the battle and there had been no men missing since. However, we had to make sure, and I took a man out with me named Private Mahoney; also a ball of string. We still heard the call, and as it came from nearer the German trenches than ours we knew they must hear as well. When we got near the shell-hole from which the sound came I told Mahoney to wait, while I crawled round to approach it from the German side. I took the end of the ball of string in my hand, so as to be able to signal back, and from a shell-hole just a few yards away I asked the man who he was and to tell me the names of some of his officers. As he seemed to know the names of all the officers I crawled into the hole alongside him, though I was still suspicious, and signalled back to my companion to go and get a stretcher. As soon as I had a good look at the poor fellow I knew he was one of ours. His hands and face were as black as a negro's, and all of him from the waist down was beneath the mud. He had not strength to move his hands, but his "_voice was a good deal too strong_," for he started to talk to me in a shout: "It's so good, matey, to see a real live man again. I've been talking to dead men for days. There was two men came up to speak to me who carried their heads under their arms!"